"Young Davey's riding as though the devil were at his heels," someone remarked, through teeth that gripped a pipe.
"Never seen him ride like that before," Thad McNab said.
Farrel did not speak; he wondered too what it was had sent the boy out into the night like that. Half an hour before he had seen him dancing with Jess Ross, and his face had just such a look as his mother's might have had when she was his age, and dancing.
He looked back into the room. Jess was sitting, a very forlorn, dejected little figure on a bench by herself. Deirdre was dancing with Conal.
Instinctively he associated Davey's going with Deirdre.
They had been such good friends when they were children, and he had imagined that they would be so glad to meet each other again.
He followed Deirdre as she danced with Conal. Conal was an old friend of his. He had seen a good deal of him since they left the hills, and few men had the place in the Schoolmaster's regard and affection that Long Conal had. He had been with them on several of their wanderings, and Deirdre and he had always seemed to get on like brother and sister together, he thought. But now he saw the gleam in Conal's eyes as he bent over her, the tenderness in his swarthy face, Deirdre's smile, her swift glances, shy and alluring, her averted head. The way she laughed and moved were a revelation to him.
"So Deirdre's a woman and at woman's tricks," he thought.
She had been a child to him till this night. Conal with his sunburnt, bearded face, his rough hands, his eyes, bright with love and laughter, had made a woman of her, he told himself. And what had she made of him? The Schoolmaster saw his eyes on her neck where the dark curls gathered dewily.
He knew as much as there was to be known of Long Conal, knew that he had flirted and drunk and sworn his way along all the stock routes in the country. He had kissed and ridden away times without number. But there was something else in his eyes now, something that promised he would never want to ride far, or long, from the sight of Deirdre.